The present invention relates to equipment for servicing cooling systems of motor vehicles; and specifically to tools for draining and recovering the coolant for environmentally conscious disposal or recycling.
Periodically, it is necessary to replace the coolant in the cooling system for a motor vehicle engine. For this purpose, a stopcock is provided at the bottom of the radiator. In order to drain the system, the stopcock is opened and a cap at the top of the radiator is removed to allow air to enter the system, braking a vacuum which would otherwise prevent the flow of coolant through the lower stopcock. For faster draining, the technician often cuts the lower radiator hose when that hose was to be replaced as part of the cooling system maintenance.
For years service technicians simply allowed the coolant to flow to a floor drain in the garage from which it entered the municipal sewer system. With increased concerns about harming the environment, such dumping of coolant, which often contains heavy metals, into a sewer system has been prohibited. Now the service technician must place a pan beneath the stopcock to catch the coolant draining from the engine and then pour the coolant into a suitable container for proper disposal according to environmental protection regulations.
The coolant drains relatively slowly from the cooling system and in fact may not drain by gravity from all of the locations within the engine block. It is therefore desirable to provide a faster technique for removing the coolant from the cooling system of a motor vehicle and recovering the drained coolant for proper disposal.